The philological element in the education

of a language teacher: Understanding

the similarity between English and Polish
Mikołaj Rychło, University of Gdańsk

The aim of this paper is to investigate formal similarities between Polish and English words
in order that teachers of English may understand the causes of the resemblances and no-
tice the connections between various cognates and loanwords in which the similarity is
disguised beneath systematic sound correspondences and parallel word-formation pro-
cesses. The results of the research presented in this paper can also be used as an element
in the education of language teachers, possibly as part of a course in etymology aiming to
encourage a view of Polish and English as emerging from a common ancestor, either of
them subsequently being affected by mechanisms of language change as well as undergo-
ing foreign influences. Such a course could also provide an opportunity to apply theoreti-
cal knowledge of descriptive and historical grammar so as to better understand the two
languages. The proposal seeks to develop one of the central aspects in the education of
language teachers, viz. a deeper understanding of the nature of the subject of teaching,
which, in Ryszard Wenzel’s model of the education of a language teacher, constitutes the
first sphere, devoted to the knowledge of the language and its general background.

Key words: borrowing, conscious learning, etymology in language education, lexicaliza-

tion, loanword, meaningful learning, Polish-English cognates, systematic sound corre-
spondences, teacher education

1. Introduction
One of the defining features of the Gdańsk School of English Language Teaching
is the assumption that conscious and meaningful learning has an important role
in the process of mastering a foreign language by adolescent and adult learners.
From the linguistic perspective, most of the past work of the Gdańsk School has
focused on a variety of issues at the level of syntax, such as a syntagmatic presenta-
tion of grammar (Wenzel 1991), the higher functions of language (Daszkiewicz
2006, Rychło 2008) and translation (Smentek-Lewandowska 2012). Rarely have
the authors focused on different levels of language analysis, for example phonetics
and phonology (Janczukowicz 2014). The reason for the emphasis on syntax is
that the ability to construct sentences may ultimately result in text-creation on the
part of the student. There has been far less attention directed to the meaningful
learning of individual lexical items for fear that such a focus may inhibit dynamic
text-creation. The present paper is an attempt to test the forbidden fruit and check
44 Mikołaj Rychło

whether it is possible not to treat the target lexical items as mere building blocks
that lack meaningful internal structure and non-arbitrary relatability with first
language congeners. Treating the risk of inhibiting dynamic text-creation as a
possible threat (but abstaining from the final verdict), we shall first consider the
idea from the angle of prospective teachers of English to Polish learners and their
preparation for the profession.
The proposal discussed in this paper has been motivated by three observations.
Firstly, while studying English, students are faced with numerous peculiarities
which appear unintelligible if we remain within the framework of contemporary
English, as they can only be understood in a historical perspective. Secondly,
there are certain important insights about the relationship between Polish and
English (as well as other languages which sprang from the same source and later
influenced English and Polish) which, if emphasized, will reveal that the con-
nection is far from arbitrary and contribute to learners’ general education with a
better understanding of the nature of language as a changing entity. Thirdly, these
issues are rarely included in curricula even though they show the potential for
improving the understanding of the subject of teaching. This improvement may
serve two purposes connected with the education of language teachers: firstly,
raising the awareness of the interrelationship among the languages which de-
scended from a common ancestor and some of them later also exerted an in-
fluence on English and Polish; and, secondly, developing the ability to enhance
meaningful learning of lexical items.

2. Understanding the causes of similarities

While learning any foreign language, one is struck not only by the unsurprising
differences between the target language and the mother tongue, which is what
one expects while studying a foreign language, but also by the remarkable simi-
larities between the two languages, for example, the similar sound and spelling
of many Polish-English pairs, such as the following ones:

(1) (2) (3)

trend / trend religia / religion nos / nose
hobby / hobby problem / problem śnieg / snow
mecz / match manuskrypt / manuscript mysz / mouse
komputer / computer preferować / prefer syn / son
stres / stress historia / history strumień / stream
dżinsy / jeans alfabet / alphabet ramię / arm
tenis / tennis areszt / arrest nowy / new
 The philological element in the education of a language teacher 45

skecz / sketch dinozaur / dinosaur gość / guest

lider / leader oponent / opponent ten sam / the same
halibut / halibut chronologia / chronology wdowa / widow
weekend / weekend astronomia / astronomy świnia / swine
fair / fair komunikacja / communication brew / brow
tost / toast kardiologia / cardiology rudy / red
czat / chat msza / mass trzy / three
haker / hacker anioł / angel siostra / sister

Why do the English words above bear such resemblance to the Polish words
listed alongside? The reasons for these similarities are manifold, and the rarest is
chance (although there are also such cases, e.g. czar / charm). As one of the cen-
tral ideas in the Gdańsk School of ELT is that the understanding of the subject
of teaching should precede the technical skill of performing it in the classroom
(Wenzel 2001: 10), it is assumed here that educated language teachers should not
only be aware of the fact that it is no accident that there are many such pairs as
the ones presented above, but they should also be able to recognize and explain
such occurrences by referring to the history of both languages.
The similarity in the first two columns results from the phenomenon of bor-
rowing (a somewhat unfortunate term in view of the fact that neither does a re-
cipient language have any intention of returning a loanword, nor does the donor
language lose the lexical item). The words in the first column are relatively late
English borrowings in Polish, which began to spread in the nineteenth century
(apart from very few earlier cases1), and witness a rapid growth in the twentieth
century.2 The dictionary of English loanwords in Polish by Mańczak-Wohlfeld
and Wiśniakowska (2010) lists almost two thousand lexical items (over three
thousand entries). The striking characteristic of these young borrowings is that
they display various foreign traits, like certain sound sequences which violate
phonotactic constraints of Polish, for example weekend or chipsy exhibit /wi/ and
/t∫i/, which are alien to the phonological system of Polish and do not appear in
native Polish vocabulary.
The second column provides examples of words which are foreign not only
in Polish but also in English. This group is far more numerous than the first
one. According to Roberts (1965), who investigated ten thousand most frequent

1 Cf. Mańczak-Wohlfeld (1987: 31), Mańczak-Wohlfeld and Wiśniakowska (2010: 8–9).

2 By contrast, in the second half of the twentieth century, the research conducted by
Fisiak (1961 and 1986) revealed as many as 700 and 1000 English loanwords in Polish
respectively.
46 Mikołaj Rychło

lexical items in English, as many as 45% are of French provenance and 17% are
of Latin origin. A closer analysis, however, reveals that in many cases the ulti-
mate source is Greek, which can be illustrated with the following examples from
the second group: astronomy (ἄστρο-ν ‘star’, -νοµος ‘distributing, arranging’),
chronology (χρόνο-ς ‘time’, λογία ‘discourse’), cardiology (καρδία ‘heart’, λογία
‘discourse’), history (ἱστορία ‘a learning or knowing by inquiry’). Many of these
words were borrowed independently into Polish either directly or through a
German or French intermediary. Instrumental in the expansion of the Mediter-
ranean culture together with adoption of Christianity in 966 in Poland and the
related concepts and artefacts was also the Czech intermediary. To the second
group could be added less numerous instances of loanwords from other lan-
guages and intermediaries (e.g. Italian opera). More advanced students can also
consider Germanic borrowings in Proto-Slavic (e.g. pług / plough).
The loanwords from the second group usually show considerable cogni-
tive appeal because they refer to many aspects of culture and civilization, the
names of various scholarly disciplines (e.g. historia / history, geografia / geogra-
phy, etymologia / etymology), the arts (e.g. muzyka / music, poeta / poet, chór /
choir), architecture (e.g. katedra / cathedral, pałac / palace, kolumna / column),
literature (e.g. tragedia / tragedy, rym / rhyme, prolog / prologue, tytuł / title,
proza / prose, kronika / chronicle), government and politics (e.g. parlament /
parliament, imperium / empire), law (e.g. areszt / arrest, adwokat / advocate,
werdykt / verdict, dekret / decree, petycja / petition), ecclesiastical words (e.g.
religia / religion, homilia / homily, teologia / theology, kardynał / cardinal, ko-
munia / communion, herezja / heresy, ołtarz / altar), precious stones (e.g. perła /
pearl, szafir / sapphire, diament / diamond, kryształ / crystal, ametyst / amethyst,
topaz / topaz) and seasoning (e.g. tymianek / thyme, musztarda / mustard, cyna-
mon / cinnamon).
Many loanwords include affixes, which gradually came to be recognized and
with time began to form new derivatives. Examples include: Nomina Actionis
with the suffixes -acja / -ation (integracja / integration, intonacja / intonation,
informacja / information, organizacja / organization, motywacja / motivation,
edukacja / education), Agentive Nominalizations ending in -ator (usually treat-
ed as an allomorph of -or), some of which go back to Latin -ātor, -ētor, -itor,
-ītor, -ūtor, and retain t in English (narrator / narrator, operator / operator, koor-
dynator / coordinator), the same suffix forming Nomina Instrumenti (kalku-
lator / calculator, generator / generator, akcelerator / accelerator), the original
Latin present participles ending in -ant and -ent, which acquired the agentive
function (emigrant / emigrant, asystent / assistant, prezydent / president, kore-
spondent / correspondent, rezydent / resident). English is also rich in neoclassical
 The philological element in the education of a language teacher 47

compounds, many of which are remarkably similar in Polish (e.g. biografia /

biography, monarchia / monarchy, dyftong / diphthong, astrologia / astrology, fo-
tosynteza / photosynthesis, biologia / biology, dermatologia / dermatology, kar-
diologia / cardiology). The similarity in all these cases results from language
contact exemplifying borrowing and should be distinguished from resemblance
caused by common origin displayed by the words in the last group, which be-
long to the inherited lexicon.
The Polish-English pairs listed in the third column above demonstrate cognates
proper, which, as the term indicates, were born together and constitute the tan-
gible evidence that Polish and English (among other Indo-European languages)
descend from one language. A closer look at the causes of similarities between
the lexical items which are presented in the third column reveals that English and
Polish are genetically related. One relatively well-reconstructed common ances-
tor is Proto-Indo-European, but it is quite likely that there must have been a later
parent language as some of the subfamilies must have branched off earlier. There
is by now a general consensus among Indo-Europeanists that the first split in the
family tree is between the Anatolian branch and all the others, and the second is
between Tocharian and the rest of the family (Clackson 2007: 13, Ringe 2008: 5)
and some scholars go so far as to assume that (Balto-)Slavic and Germanic are the
most closely related subfamilies (Mańczak 1987: 24, Witczak 2008: 453, Kroonen
2013: xiii).
There are various traces of the common origin, which can be found in cog-
nates. Of course, the time distance since the parent language began to differ-
entiate and split has allowed for more considerable change than in the case of
loanwords, which have been present in the Polish language for a relatively short
time. The examples gathered above are meant to illustrate the similarity to begin-
ner students of etymology and historical linguistics. In the next section, further
cognates will be presented, which do not appear so alike prima facie, but, on
closer inspection, they can be shown to derive from a common source. In order
for the students to be able to relate them, we need to focus on systematic sound
correspondences.

3. Systematic sound correspondences

Ever since the period of common proto-language, many sound changes have
taken place, which are responsible for the differences between modern English
and Polish. A good place to start is to concentrate on the period when Proto-
Germanic, the parent of the Germanic languages, developed as a separate entity.
The transformation of the consonant system which took place at that time was
48 Mikołaj Rychło

described by Rasmus Rask (1932 [1818]: 187–188) and Jacob Grimm (1822) and
is known as the First Germanic Consonant Shift or Grimm’s Law. Among other
changes, the voiceless plosives became fricatives retaining their voicelessness and
the approximate place of articulation. Let us just focus on two such developments:
*p > *f, and *t > *þ (later respelled as th around 1400 in English). Polish, which is
not Germanic, often retains the consonants from the left of each shaftless arrow,
whereas English, as a Germanic language, shows the effect of Grimm’s Law.
Once the students know this, the connection between Polish pięść and
English fist becomes more transparent. Of course, many other sound changes are
responsible for further differences, for example the cluster of the soft consonants
in Polish pięść is the result of Polish palatalizations. We can find closer matches
in related forms, for instance in the diminutive piąstka, where the st remains un-
palatalized as in English fist. The term systematic indicates that we should expect
to find the same sound correspondence in other cognates, which is the case in
pięć / five, pełny / full, pławić / flow, piana / foam and in many others.3
The same correspondence can also be used to associate Greek, Latin or French
loanwords in English with native Germanic vocabulary in English, which devel-
oped from the same roots, for example: piscis / fish, paternal / father, podium /
foot. Such borrowings frequently retain the Proto-Indo-European sounds and
also show the effect of sound changes which occurred in donor languages. In
other words, they bypassed sound changes described by Grimm’s Law because
they were borrowed much later. Similarly, absence of the traces of Grimm’s Law
in Polish-English pairs (e.g. in opera / opera, pielgrzymka / pilgrimage) indicates
that the similarity has much younger roots than the time of the common proto-
language; that is to say, these are not cognates, but loanwords.
Another sound change belonging to Grimm’s Law, which can help students to
relate Polish-English cognates, is one by which Proto-Indo-European *t developed
into Proto-Germanic *þ. The consonant remains an interdental fricative in many
English words and can be contrasted with Polish cognates which preserve the /t/.
This generalization can already be applied to notice the relatedness and explain the
difference in the following pairs of cognates:

3 Over twenty further cases are discussed in Rychło (2014a, 2014c) and a detailed ac-
count of the sound changes responsible for the differentiation of Polish pięść and Eng-
lish fist is available in Rychło (2012).
 The philological element in the education of a language teacher 49

(4)
a. Polish ty, English thou
b. Polish trzeźwy, English thirst
c. Polish trzy, English three
d. Polish tuk, tuczyć, English thigh
e. Polish tysiąc, English thousand
f. Polish tajać, English thaw
g. Polish stóg, English thatch
h. Polish brat, English brother
i. Polish który, English whether
Of course, it is not only the sounds which change over time. Some cognates point
to remarkable instances of a change of meaning (e.g. trzeźwy ‘sober’ / thirst, tuk
‘grease’ / thigh). An analysis of semantic change in one pair of Polish-English
cognates is available in Rychło (2014b).
Another important skill which ought to be practised so as to be able to no-
tice cognates is the ability to realize which groups of sounds in a language can
go back to a common ancestor. A case in point is the alveolo-palatal voiceless
affricate, spelled as ć in Polish, which, despite the phonemic independence (ex-
emplified by such minimal pairs as grat ‘piece of junk’ vs. grać ‘play’ or tarki
‘graters’ vs. ciarki ‘shivers’), can be considered a historical variant of the alveo-
lar voiceless plosive t, and it also corresponds to the same English interdental
fricative. This phenomenon can be illustrated with the following Polish-English
cognates:
(5)
a. Polish cierń, English thorn
b. Polish cienki, English thin
c. Polish wić, witka, English withy
While the English examples display the same interdental fricative as in the previ-
ous set under (4), the Polish cognates show the effect of Old Polish palatalization,
by which Proto-Slavic *t changed into *tj and finally became Polish /tࢎ ‫ܨ‬/ spelled
as <ć> or <ci>. The Slavic cognates below demonstrate that the Polish alveolo-
palatal voiceless affricate is genetically related to /t/ and Russian preserves the
intermediate stage of this development, namely tj.
(6)
a. Polish cierń, Czech trn, Slovak tŕň, Russian tërn ‘blackthorn, sloe’
b. Polish cienki, Czech tenký, Slovak tenký, Russian tónkij ‘thin’
50 Mikołaj Rychło

According to Mańczak (1983: 36), Proto-Slavic *t first became *tj still in the pre-
historic period, and in the 13th century developed into Polish ć. This change oc-
curred before front vowels, except *ьr (*tьr۠ > trę) and *ьn (*tьn۠ > tnę). As a
result, t /t/ alternates with ć /tࢎ ‫ܨ‬/ in many related forms: matka: mać, macierze,
maciora, macierzyński; brat: bracie; ty: cię, (ciebie).
To sum up, on the one hand, the three sound changes presented above repre-
sent a tiny fraction of all sound changes responsible for the differences between
Polish-English cognates. Some cognates underwent so many changes that they
can hardly be connected without a good command of diachronic phonologies of
both languages and an understanding of semantic change. Examples of such cog-
nates include trzoda / herd,4 żywy/quick, mózg / marrow. On the other hand, even
above discussion of only three sound changes already shows that Polish-English
cognates are relatable in terms of sound correspondences, which are generally
systematic and occur in many Polish-English pairs which derive from a common
ancestor.

4. Lexicalization
Polish-English pairs like the ones discussed above frequently exhibit only certain
parts which are cognate. If we compare Polish matka and English mother, we
can notice immediately that despite the similarity, the English word has nothing
which would correspond to Polish -ka. A more exact cognate here is Polish ma-
cierz because ci and rz can be related to English th and r respectively and the dif-
ferences can be accounted for in terms of sound changes. In other words, there are
systematic sound correspondences which demonstrate that Polish macierz and
English mother developed from a common ancestor. The explanation for a dif-
ferent shape of Polish matka lies in the process of lexicalization, by which words
may lose their morphological boundaries: What used to be a diminutive with
the suffix -ka < Proto-Slavic *ъka,5 has become neutral and the suffix stopped
being perceived as a morpheme. An important skill which should be practised is
to recognize the historically complex morphological structure which, from the
modern perspective, may appear less complex or even monomorphemic.

4 How the two words descended from one Proto-Indo-European word is explained in
Rychło (2013).
5 Cf. many unquestionable examples in modern Polish, such as kieszeń ‘pocket’ –
kieszonka ‘pocket, dim.’, chusta ‘kerchief, shawl’ – chustka ‘handkerchief ’. Some of
these diminutives have become neutral and their bases are now perceived as augment-
ed, e.g. księga ‘book, augm.’ – książka ‘book’, córa ‘daughter, augm.’ – córka ‘daughter’.
 The philological element in the education of a language teacher 51

As another case in point, let us consider deadjectival nouns with an old suf-
fix surviving as -th in present-day English. Representative examples include
true – truth and warm – warmth. Slightly less transparent but still easily relatable
instances are long – length, strong – strength, wide – width, broad – breadth and
deep – depth. The skill is needed to recognize the historically complex morpho-
logical structure in the word filth, which due to both sound changes coupled
with semantic changes lost the easily discernible connection with its base foul.
Its first meaning, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “grossly offensive
to the senses, physically loathsome; primarily with reference to the odour or ap-
pearance indicative of putridity or corruption”. The connection with filth is not
straightforward for a number of reasons. Firstly, the morphological boundary
became blurred once the shape of the root became different as a result of a sound
change (the I-Umlaut, which had fronted the vowel in OE fȳlþ). The relationship
of filth with foul would be as transparent as the connection of long – length or
strong – strength if it had not been for the second reason, namely the semantic
change (the basic meaning ‘the quality or state of being foul’ became obsolete
and the word refers to foul matter, especially ‘dirt’, possibly ‘moral defilement’ as
in the filth of the wicked.
Such lexicalization processes can make the connection between many Polish-
English cognates less transparent because, as a result of the loss of morpheme
boundaries, it can be difficult to realize that only part of a word in one language
is cognate with a word (or only a morpheme) in the other language. Examples in-
clude: English friend, Polish przyjaciel (cf. -ciel, as in nauczyciel ‘teacher’, czciciel
‘admirer’ and the base (s)przyjać ‘support’); English rib, Polish żebro (cf. other
parts of the body: biodro ‘hip’, jądro ‘testicle’, which show the morphological
identity of -ro); English rye, Polish rżysko (cf. Polish reż, ‘rye, arch.’); English
yellow, Polish żółty (the comparison with German gelb shows that the initial con-
sonant became palatalized to /j/ in English, and /ŗ/ in Polish; cf. also different
colour adjectives in Polish with the suffix -ow(y), cognate to the one in English
yellow: płowy, różowy, liliowy, fioletowy); English brother, Polish brat (cf. Polish
adjective braterski); English thin, Polish cienki.
To sum up, some words which can be considered monomorphemic from
the modern synchronic perspective consist of historically distinguishable parts.
Sometimes only some of these parts have cognates.

5. A non-arbitrary link
The potential of etymological information for meaningful learning of various
lexical items by students of English lies in a non-arbitrary connection between
52 Mikołaj Rychło

the form and meaning of a certain word or morpheme on the one hand, and
the learner’s cognitive structure on the other hand. In other words, meaningful
learning is possible if learners relate the new lexical item with their prior knowl-
edge in a non-accidental way.
To take a practical example, let us suppose a student does not know the word
orthodontist. The learner’s prior knowledge with which the new lexical item
could potentially be associated in this case is the word orthography. By high-
lighting the combining form ortho- (from Greek ὀρθός) with its meaning ‘right,
proper, correct’, it is possible to build the non-arbitrary connection between the
new item and the rest of the learner’s cognitive structure.
Meanings naturally undergo change and the etymological meaning might be
different from the contemporary meaning. The word orthopaedics, apart from
Greek ὀρθό-ς ‘right, proper, correct’, contains Greek παῖς, παιδ- ‘boy, child’,
which is also found in pedagogy, paedophile or paedocracy ‘government by chil-
dren’, so the etymological meaning of orthopaedics is ‘the art of remedying de-
formities of children’, which apparently became extended to ‘the art of curing
distortions in general’. Needless to say, the fact that meanings change is not so
much a shortcoming of the proposed technique as the additional flavour, which
can be even more salient if we apply a contrastive approach.
Such etymological associations can be activated both in the target language
and in the mother tongue. The meaningful link is possible even if the student
does not know the English words orthography, orthopaedics, orthodontist, but
is acquainted with at least some of the Polish equivalents. The same potential
lies in many other neoclassical compounds and loanwords exemplified under
(2) above. Particularly promising are word families, for example words derived
on the basis of Greek χρόνος ‘time’, such as chronologia / chronology, chronicz-
ny / chronic, diachroniczny / diachronic, synchronizować / synchronize, anachro-
nizm / anachronism, kronika / chronicle. Depending on the general education
of the student and on the vocabulary range, the teacher can choose which of
the notions the learner is familiar with in order to build from the known to the
unknown.
The etymological meaning can also provide insights into the world of our
ancestors and a potential for revealing these insights lies in the contrastive analy-
sis of cognates. The pair Polish ściana ‘wall’ and English stone may serve as an
example. The etymological meaning of ściana is disclosed in juxtaposition with
English stone (recall the systematic sound correspondence Polish ść English st as
in pięść / fist). Not only do we notice a semantic change (possibly a metonymic
extension) but we can also form a hypothesis as to the material from which walls
were built.
 The philological element in the education of a language teacher 53

Cognates with different meaning are stimulating because they sometimes ex-
hibit a connection between two concepts which may not appear related prima fa-
cie, for example Polish syty ‘satiated’ and English sad. The contrastive analysis of
such cognates provokes reflection because if the two notions have common ori-
gin, there must be something that they share. In order to explain the difference,
one can envisage a situation in which the adjective is used to describe someone
who seems satiated to the speaker, while the listener, looking at the same person,
interprets the meaning of the adjective as ‘sad’.

6. Conclusion
The kind of meaningful learning and teaching described above requires some
skill and knowledge, which need to find their place in the education of language
teachers, for example in the form of a course of etymology which would focus on
finding the connection between various aspects of English and Polish lexicons.
What is helpful in fulfilling this aim is the study of the history of both languages
including systematic sound correspondences which reveal a potential for fixing
new words in the mind of students by establishing a non-arbitrary relationship
between a new lexical item and the learner’s prior knowledge. Another useful
skill is the ability to recognize historically complex words, which can be con-
sidered monomorphemic from the modern synchronic perspective but, histori-
cally, consist of distinguishable parts.
The ideas for a course of etymology for prospective teachers of English de-
scribed in this paper can be included in the first sphere of Wenzel’s model of
the education of a language teacher (2001:10–11), devoted to the knowledge of
the language and its general background, in order to support the requirement
of a deeper understanding of the nature of the subject of teaching. A word of
explanation is in order with regard to conscious learning and education of a lan-
guage teacher, which imply that understanding of a given phenomenon or issue
of teaching should precede the technical skill of performing it in the classroom.
What is at the core of the Gdańsk School of ELT is the conscious approach
to language education and, especially, to the education of the language teacher.
This approach is far from being obvious and universal. One of many theories of
foreign language teaching which stands in sharp contrast to the Gdańsk School
is Krashen and Terrell’s Natural Approach and the resulting conception of sec-
ond language acquisition in which “conscious learning has an extremely limited
function” (Krashen and Terrell 1983: 30). The Gdańsk School of ELT, on the
other hand, emphasizes the role of conscious learning in language education
and considers it to be not only a more efficient vehicle for mastering a foreign
54 Mikołaj Rychło

language but also a value in its own right. The scope of this paper does not al-
low for the discussion of the arguments, which are presented in Wenzel (2001)
and Rychło (2008). The importance of language awareness is also emphasized by
Danilewicz (2011), while conscious learning is further developed in terms of the
idea of conscious bilingualism, researched by Smalara-Lewandowska (2009, also
in the present volume), and advance organizers developed by Aleksandrowska
(2010) and Rychło (2007).
The numerous similarities between English and Polish, some of which have
been discussed in this paper, quite naturally give rise to ‘why questions’. Much as
we may forgive ignoring such questions in various approaches and methods to
ELT on the assumption that not everyone is necessarily interested in a compre-
hensive understanding of language in a historical perspective, it is our conviction
that well-educated teachers of English should have a course in their curriculum
that would teach them how to look for the answers to such questions and also pro-
vide them with opportunities to practise searching for the answers on their own.

References
Aleksandrowska, Olga (2010). Językowe i kognitywne korzyści wynikające z
zastosowania organizatora poprzedzającego w glottodydaktyce. In: Ewa Ko-
morowska and Danuta Stanulewicz (eds.). Język, Tożsamość i Komunikacja
międzykulturowa: Księga pamiątkowa ofiarowana Doktor Bożenie Zinkiewicz
-Tomanek. Szczecin: Volumina.pl Daniel Krzanowski, 15–24.
Clackson, James (2007). Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Danilewicz, Tadeusz (2011). Language Awareness and a Second Language Teacher.
Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego.
Daszkiewicz, Michał (2006). The Assessment of Second-Language Reading and
Writing Skills According to Karl Popper’s Model of Language Functions. Unpub-
lished PhD dissertation. University of Gdańsk.
Fisiak, Jacek (1961). Zapożyczenia angielskie w języku polskim [English loanwords
in the Polish language]. Unpublished PhD dissertation. University of Łódź.
Fisiak, Jacek (1986). The word-formation of English loanwords in Polish. In:
W. Viereck, W. D. Bald (eds.). English in Contrast with Other Languages.
Budapest: Akadémiai Kiado, 253–263.
Grimm, Jacob (1893 [1822]). Deutsche Grammatik. Gütersloh: C. Bertelmann.
Janczukowicz, Karolina (2014). Teaching English Pronunciation at the Secondary
School Level. Frankfurt am Mein: Peter Lang.
 The philological element in the education of a language teacher 55

Krashen, Stephen D., Tracy D. Terrell (1983). The Natural Approach: Language
Acquisition in the Classroom. Hayward, California: Alemany Press.
Kroonen, Guus (2013). Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic. Leiden,
Boston: Brill.
Mańczak, Witold (1987). Przedhistoryczne stosunki słowiańsko-germańskie. In:
Mieczysław Basaj (ed.). Etnolingwistyczne i kulturowe związki Słowian z Ger-
manami. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy Imienia Ossolińskich, Wydawnictwo
Polskiej Akademii Nauk.
Mańczak, Witold (1983). Polska fonetyka i morfologia historyczna. Warszawa:
Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Mańczak-Wohlfeld, Elżbieta (1987). Najstarsze zapożyczenia angielskie w pol-
szczyźnie. Język Polski LXVII: 25–31.
Mańczak-Wohlfeld, Elżbieta, Lidia Wiśniakowska (eds.) (2010). Słownik zapo-
życzeń angielskich w polszczyźnie. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition in progress: OED Online, March
2000-. John A. Simpson (ed.). Available at www.oed.com. Accessed 24th No-
vember 2014.
Rask, Rasmus (1932 [1818]). UndersØgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Island-
ske Sprogs Oprindelse. In: Louis Hjelmslev (ed.). Ausgewählte Abhandlungen.
Vol. 1. Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard.
Ringe, Don (2008). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Roberts, Aaron Hood (1965). A Statistical Linguistic Analysis of American Eng-
lish. Den Haag: Mouton.
Rychło, Mikołaj (2007). To what extent the content in foreign language teaching
should be educational. In Janusz Arabski, Danuta Gabryś-Baker and Andrzej
Łyda (eds.). PASE Papers 2007. Vol. 1. Studies in Language and Methodology of
Teaching Foreign Languages. Katowice: Para, 341–350.
Rychło, Mikołaj (2008). The Educational Approach to Language Teaching. War-
szawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Rychło, Mikołaj (2012). An etymological comparison of English fist and Polish
pięść: How they both descended from the PIE root for ‘five’. Linguistica Sile-
siana 33: 19–38.
Rychło, Mikołaj (2013). English herd and Polish trzoda: How the two words
developed from one Proto-Indo-European root. Acta Neophilologica XV/1:
155–166.
 56 Mikołaj Rychło

Rychło, Mikołaj (2014a). Ślady prawa Grimma w angielszczyźnie w zestawieniu

z polskimi wyrazami pokrewnymi: pie. *p > pgerm. *f. Język Polski XCIV/3:
200–211.
Rychło, Mikołaj (2014b). Gothic wopjan, Polish wabić and English weep. In:
Grzegorz A. Kleparski, Ewa Konieczna, Beata Kopecka (eds.). The Subcarpa-
thian Studies in English Language, Literature and Culture. Vol. 1. Linguistics
and Methodology. Rzeszów: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego,
121–132.
Rychło, Mikołaj (2014c). Przejście pie. *p w pgerm. *f utrwalone w polsko-
angielskich wyrazach pokrewnych: praformy różniące się budową słowotwór-
czą oraz późniejsze zmiany modyfikujące skutki prawa Grimma. Język Polski
XCIV/5: 452–462.
Smalara, Marta (2009). Conscious Bilingualism and its Educational Implications.
Unpublished PhD dissertation. University of Gdańsk.
Smentek-Lewandowska, Małgorzata (2012). Translation in Teaching and Learn-
ing English as a Foreign Language at the Advanced Levels. Unpublished PhD
dissertation. University of Gdańsk.
Wenzel, Ryszard (1991). Jak uczyć języka obcego poprzez samodzielne tworzenie
tekstu. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne.
Wenzel, Ryszard (2001). The Education of a Language Teacher. Gdańsk: Wydaw-
nictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego.
Witczak, Krzysztof Tomasz (2008). Dyferencjacja języków indoeuropejskich.
In: Leszek Bednarczuk, Wojciech Smoczyński, Maria Wojtyła-Świerzowska
(eds.). Językoznawstwo historyczne i typologiczne. W 100-lecie urodzin profeso-
ra Tadeusza Milewskiego. Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 449–457.

View publication stats